The Centaur

I read this book about three weeks ago; so these are my lasting impressions so to speak. This is my first time reading an Updike novel and I haven't taken the time to learn much about him, except to know that he's highly regarded. Nevertheless, halfway through I simply wanted to get it over with. The central character is a high school general science teacher whose class apparently loves him and shows it by shooting a broad tip hunting arrow through his ankle. How this happened is never explained. This is the opening scene: the teacher hobbling down the hall, not to the medical office or to get someone to take him to an emergency room, but to his friendly garage mechanic who uses an acetylene torch to cut through the metal shaft and extract it. I don't remember that he ever went to the doctor at all, except to confirm a previous diagnosis that he is dying, something that he seems to want to believe. What happened to the four steps that begin with denial, anger, et seq? He's so down on himself that he can't realize how good he really is.There is one hilarious passage that made me laugh out loud and think hopefully that we were into a Catch 22 laugheroo; but no such luck. Instead we get some crazy stuff. Here's a guy so lacking in backbone that his wife persuades him to leave an adequate house in the small town where he teaches and move the family to a rundown farm a half hour drive from his teaching job. It's a farm house where they don't even have indoor plumbing. This commute he makes daily in an old car that has an almost dead battery and you guessed it, the battery is dead on the very day that he just has to be at school on time. He pushes it down a hill to get it started (I did this more than a few times in high school, so it brought back memories, but when it happens again later on in the story it's once too often). But does he buy a new battery? No, he can't because on a teacher's pay he doesn't have two nickels to rub together.Enter his high school sophomore son, a good kid, actually a very good kid, whose principal fault is an obsession with a freshman girl whose body he is determined to explore in some of her prohibited zones. I could have done without that, but maybe I shouldn't speak for other readers. OK, the kid has more street smarts than his dad. Dad, why don't we just buy a new battery? Why are we trying to get home in a blizzard when we could stay in town with friends? (They ultimately have to when the car can't make it up a snowy hill and they leave it in a drift. Oh, I forgot to mention, the battery was dead when they tried to start out on this ill-fated trip and I forget the weird way that they got it started this time.)There is some poetic prose now and then. A tangle with the school superintendent. Some sexual mischief (not involving our teacher). Some allusions to Greek mythology. It would have helped if I had remembered a little more from whatever schooling I had on Zeus,Apollo, and their friends. Whatever was Mr. Updike's purpose, maybe that's why I missed it.

Updike is my jam. Even though he has been mostly forgotten since his death and has been heaped in the mid to late 20th Century white guy corner, he still deserves to be read. He loves writing - recording thoughts about love, family, sex and death and middle class America. This is a wonderful book and was written a decade before the term Magical Realism became a thing. Also, read The Coup, Couples and The Witches of Eastwick. He is more than just his Rabbit novels.This Fawcett paperback was on old library copy and I love each musty, yellow page and small print. It's 1972 all over again or whenever the heck this was reissued.

Riotously creative, at times almost disorientingly so, Updike envisions the relationship between a boy and his father, dramatized in a thread of commonplace events, as a mythical Greek epic. The effect is to elevate and eternalize the ordinary, to cast the mundane in the context of the heroic, and finally, to lay bare our inability to rationalize our own existence. This is a self-consciously artistic work, and Updike's astonishing ability to capture the subtlest experiences and observations in his prose sometimes seems to take on a life of its own. Yet, those who are willing to be patient, if not indulgent, and read this prose as though it were poetry -- which it is -- will be richly rewarded, and, at the same time, mightily entertained.

Updike's prose is truly beautiful. I'm not going to begrudge him that. But he's a bit of a misogynist and he doesn't really say much. Not with THE CENTAUR at least. If you want to see two mildly interesting characters portrayed in a fairly reasonable and realistic light, go ahead. The book isn't awful. It's actually quite engaging really. It just feels a bit like a literary rice cake. There doesn't seem to be too much there.

Updike writes so gorgeously throughout this book that it is often like trying to see after looking at the sun, dazzled and disoriented by the light, swooning from ephiphanies of metaphors. In essence it's a father/son book,set in a time when a dollar was worth something.

I had read a review of the Centaur prior to purchasing the book, so I was prepared for the mythological chapters. Otherwise it could have been very confusing. However, true to John Updike's clarity of emotions and descriptive passages and the feeling I get that he understood the human animal, I am thoroughly enjoying the book. I am near finished reading it and I am happy that I will have it in my collection of John Updike's writings.

One of Updike's best books, THE CENTAUR is the opposite of RABBIT, RUN. Harry Angstrom, Rabbit, seeks self-gratification. George Caldwell does his duty. One runs, the other plods. Both find themselves caught. Updike adds the touch of inserting into the narrative the story of Chiron and the greek gods. Wonderfully done, very touching.

This book is fantasy woven together with just enough reality to keep it fun. It's a beautiful relationship between a father and son with a backstory full of fantasy, an intriguing mistress, and a dreadful boss. Add in a dangerous winter storm and you have a book that's hard to put down. You'll be hoping for a snow day so you can read it.

A great Updike - worth reading (if you get feed up with it I found it grated down well and added real body to my plum wine - thanks John :)

A knowledge of the classics helps to really enjoy The Centaur. But the evocation and atmosphere around this human situation are created through realism mixed with the poetic.

Reading this book reminded me of slipping in and out of day dreams as a child. John's writing is captivating despite the fact that the storyline never quite lifts from normality and his descriptions of every passing moment is based on the minutest of details.It is true to say that he makes the ordinairy extraordinairy and carries you with his thoughts wherever they may be.A heart warming read.

Prompt delivery, item as described

Lovely story, superbly written. The book is in a very good condition, practically like new.